Warmode Sharding is great

Community General Discussion
1

Just spent 2 hours in Naz in a horde group, picked up 2 caches, finished an event rather quickly and found maybe 3 alliance.

Got out of the group and look, a new cache… with about 20 alliance and zero horde.

Like seriously, you can’t put the two of them together? Maybe there were plenty of alliance running around when I was group who didn’t care for PVP and just wanted the bonus, and maybe it was the same when I was not grouped.

But I have seen this every time I am there with warmode, no group = lot’s of alliance and when grouped there is none.

And the group I was in was not a ‘PVP’ group, we were farming rares, not actually trying to kill the alliance.

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2

Sharding is horribly broken, it’s true.

The underlying issue is, like so many things wrong with WoW, transparency: no one really knows how it works.

I think Blizzard’s stance is a little understandable: if they explain how it works, about TWO SECONDS later people then try and exploit it. That’s just the nature of things (ESPECIALLY PvP things).

So Blizzard is in a bind. Their system is broken, yet it could be WORSE if they gave insight into some of the real issues with why it’s broken. And so… we just sit here.

I was doing stuff in Mechg yesterday for about an hour when I commented that I hadn’t seen a single Alliance. Someone said “I’ve been here for almost 4 hours and still haven’t seen one-- NOT ONE!” And immediately 4-5 people agreed.

I mean, it’s great for my Azurite count. Getting that 10% bonus for free. But it’s sad JUST HOW BROKEN this dynamic is.

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3

And yet they give us Warmode quests to do.

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4

The whole thing is super one sided no matter what. I have been in a group where we took over their home location in Nazjatar and then been in a situation where the Alliance has completely dominated a zone. At first I thought the Alliance Warmode was just a joke but then realized it was that the system I think is messed up.

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5

But don’t you see, that just proves how broken it is. Let’s say for a moment that there ARE more Horde in Warmode.

Assuming that’s true, the Horde should then have more occasions where we just sit around with no one to kill. Too bad.

But the Alliance should ALWAYS then have some sort of decent, MOSTLY FAIR AND BALANCED sort of wPvP going on. Their shards should ALWAYS have a pool of Horde to attain balance.

And yet, as the OP stated and I know I have also experienced, THIS IS NOT THE CASE! When I leave my completely Horde-dominated shard (expected), I end up getting thrown into an utterly Alliance-dominated shard and getting curb-stomped (which should NEVER happen!).

Not because “I’m Horde looking for easy mode.” But because sharding is supposed to fix that problem. Or … ok … maybe it isn’t! Like I said, this is where we lack transparency. Maybe Sharding WANTS to just let people have no fighting chance, get frustrated, and quit in frustration.

Sounds stupid, but without know how it works, we can’t say for certain. All I know is-- that IS how it works!!!

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6

Well I am agreeing with you, from my experience it is as you say. That said I have not used Warmode all that much but everytime it has been like you described.

7

I think I was more trying to outline that in a working system, if there is a rather lopsided size of teams, one of them WILL IN FACT just be sitting around with no one to kill.

This is important to stress because, somehow, people are so dim they think Warmode means it’ll be “equal sharding” all the time. I mean, it’s like 3rd grade math to understand that just isn’t going to happen and yet I hear that argument ALL THE TIME.

I would love to see the Sharding machine at work yesterday during my Battle for Nazjatar. SUPPOSEDLY the game won’t even start unless the zone has some sense of balance. Otherwise, a PvE-type event starts. I’ve MOSTLY seen this PvE event, so I know THAT part is working.

But in my BfN yesterday, we won 3000:2. Alliance scored TWO POINTS! So you’re going to try and convince me there were enough Alli in the zone to begin the event, but couldn’t score more than TWO???

Sorry, not buying that. Somehow, that event started when there were 50 Horde in the Shard, and 4 Alliance-- TOPS. We farmed the hell outta those 4 guys to the point we felt bad killing them.

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8

The intent of sharding was to balance out things. The reality of sharding is pretty much as you described it. Good idea, but horrific execution of same.

Side note: Most people can barely handle basic arithmetic given the state of public education, at least in most parts of the US. So don’t be too hard on them for not understanding what they’ve never been given a chance to learn.

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9

Today we had 4 people in the group with Warmode on trying to kite the colossal sea ray to the tree guy that drops the bark. After 10 min or so we got him down there, killed him to spawn the tree, then we invited another guildmate who needed the bark, they forgot they had Warmode off but when they joined it phased us to a different shard for some reason and the tree disappeared.

10/10 gameplay, was extremely immersed.

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10

CRZ and sharding were the best thing added to WoW.

:persevere::nauseated_face::face_vomiting::sneezing_face::mask:

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11

they should really stop with call to arms, pvp dailies and wpvp events. It just doesn’t work.

And when it should work, like when there 2 very big raids - game simply dies in endless lags and delays on every action

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12

In theory.

But you need a damn PHD to make Blizzards system to work.

13

I was joking. I hate both so much.

14

I’ve said it until I could almost puke. Sharding by itself was a terrible idea. But throwing something like war mode into the already terrible mix just makes it even worse. It’s like throwing dirt into a pot of burnt coffee and expecting it to be good.

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15

Sharding is bad right now. Seems like they did some change with 8.2 and that broke it.

Supposedly Battle for Nazjatar doesn’t start unless the shards are balanced? That hasn’t been my experience though. It starts, all the flags go red in a couple of minutes and then the people come to camp Mezzamere so they can try and get credit for the event.

That is the sum of it. Maybe it worked great on their curated internal testing realms, who knows. But when that system encounters the actual real world, lo and behold - it fails.

16

why are people still under the impression that sharding is meant to balance factions?

17

Because that is what Blizzard said, not so much factions, but that events especially in Naz are not supposed to trigger until there is a balance.

So unless players are on Warmode just doing nothing but get the 10% bonus, it is failing.

18

huh.

i don’t recall that.

19

I can’t link, but if you look on these forums for “BATTLE FOR NAZJATAR” CHANGES MADE you will find a blue post about it.

20

this one?

says nothing about using sharding to balance factions.